A software defined network (SDN) is a new-type network architecture. In a core technology OPENFLOW of the SDN, a control plane and a data plane of a network device are separated, thereby implementing flexible control of network traffic.
In the OPENFLOW protocol, the switch may accomplish a failover using a fast failover group table when a port of a switch encounters a failure. There are n transmit ports which are used with active/active clustering and are saved in the group table of the switch. The switch detects statuses of the n ports in real time. The switch switches a transmit port from the active port to a standby port and sends a data packet using the standby port when detecting that an active port encounters a failure.
However, in the solution in the prior art, each switch can detect an electric failure of only a respective port. After a path in a network encounters a failure, OPENFLOW does not provide a corresponding solution. As shown in FIG. 1, FIG. 1 is a schematic structural diagram of a network topology. The network topology includes 8 switches, which are S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S6, S7, and S8. Fast switching to another communication path needs to be performed when a failure occurs between S5 and S8 on a communication path S1→S3→S5→S8. However, OPENFLOW does not provide a corresponding solution, and communication interruption occurs.